News on Ukraine From Outside the Neoliberal Media Matrix

In the movie, 'The Matrix', humans only belatedly discovered the lives they were living were virtual hallucination lies and they were actually wrapped in pod-like cocoons from which they had to be forcibly liberated. The actual reality of Earth was a dark, dystopian place replete with smoking ruins and few resources - not the glitzy world on offer in the dream world. Something similar obtains with the fictitious view of the world on offer from the U.S. Neoliberal media - hell bent to distort all our vision on external events, especially what's happening in the Ukraine.

To help liberate readers from their respective Neolib-confected news 'cocoons' I offer the following news items from outside the 'Matrix'!

NATO's Warmongers: 

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/brian-cloughley/54851/the-belligerent-alliance-natos-warmongers
Excerpt:

Nato’s vast air forces blitzed Yugoslavia into submission. When the Balkan war was over, leaving the region in fragments, Nato congratulated itself and looked for another reason to remain in being. Europe was at peace and there were no indications that there could ever be a conflict. There could have been a new era for Russia. But it wasn’t allowed to see the dawn of reconciliation because Nato desperately wanted to expand its numbers and surround and threaten the new Russia that was so anxious to join the comity of nations.

Nato asked Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join in 1999. Then in 2004 came Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. To increase the net-drawing round Russia’s borders, Albania and Croatia were added in 2009. At the Chicago Nato summit in May 2012 it was declared that “At the 2008 Bucharest Summit we agreed that Georgia will become a member of Nato and we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions.”

Why did the US want all these countries to join Nato? Russia was no threat to any of them. But Russia could present an economic threat to the US, especially as it was prospering through its cooperation with the European Union in provision of gas, oil and coal. And, who knows? – there could have been a very much wider economic union: that of Russia with greater Europe. This was to be circumvented at all costs.

So Nato re-invented itself at the bidding of Washington. According to Nato, it “has a new mission: extending peace through the strategic projection of security… This is not a mission of choice, but of necessity. The Allies neither invented nor desired it.” Well, in that case, just who did desire and invent it?

Nato’s members “undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered.” Right now they are engaging in provocative military confrontation that could hazard world peace. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that they don’t run aground.


Ukraine + Flight 370: Bad News for Neocons

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/ira-chernus/54838/ukraine-flight-370-bad-news-for-neocons

Excerpt:

For whatever reason, Ukraine and Flight 370 have held roughly equal appeal in the American news appetite, with 370 often having the edge. So the deep geopolitical dimensions of the Ukraine story obviously don't matter a whole lot to the news-consuming public. The people want to be infotained.

That's very bad news for the neoconservatives who have worked so hard, and are still working, to make the U.S. - Russia showdown over Ukraine a matter of incomparable import and urgency.

Not that they care so deeply about the Ukrainian people. For neocons, Ukraine is just the latest center stage for a drama that is always unfolding (more or less) everywhere, a drama pitting strong U.S. leadership against a global collapse into chaos and anarchy. Those are the only two alternatives neocons can see. And to them it looks like a matter of life or death.

Apparently the rest of America no longer sees it that way. That's the bad news for the neoconservatives.

To understand what’s at stake here for the neocons and for the rest of us, let's look briefly at the history of their movement.


Crimea's Case for Leaving Ukraine:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54693/crimeas-case-for-leaving-Ukraine

Excerpt:

If you were living in Crimea, would you prefer to remain part of Ukraine with its coup-installed government – with neo-Nazis running four ministries including the Ministry of Defense – or would you want to become part of Russia, which has had ties to Crimea going back to Catherine the Great in the 1700s?

Granted, it’s not the greatest choice in the world, but it’s the practical one facing you. For all its faults, Russia has a functioning economy while Ukraine really doesn’t. Russia surely has its share of political and financial corruption but some of that has been brought under control.

Not so in Ukraine where a moveable feast of some 10 “oligarchs” mostly runs the show in shifting alliances, buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population faces a bleak future, which now includes more European-demanded “austerity,” i.e. slashed pensions and further reductions in already sparse social services.

Even if the U.S.-backed plan for inserting Ukraine into the European Union prevails, Ukrainians would find themselves looking up the socio-economic ladder at the Greeks and other European nationals already living the nightmare of “austerity.”

Beyond that humiliation and misery, the continuing political dislocations across Ukraine would surely feed the further rise of right-wing extremists who espouse not only the goal of expelling ethnic Russians from Ukraine but Jews and other peoples considered not pure Ukrainian.

What’s Wrong with Secession?

And, despite what you hear from the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media, it’s not at all uncommon for people to separate themselves from prior allegiances.

It’s especially common amid political upheavals, like Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-spearheaded coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych – after he signed an agreement on Feb. 21 to relinquish much of his power, hold early elections and order police to withdraw.

Though this agreement was co-signed by European nations, they stood aside when neo-Nazi militias exploited the police withdrawal and overran government buildings, forcing Yanukovych and many government officials to flee for their lives.
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Mainstream Media is Lost in Ukraine:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54812/mainstream-us-media-is-lost-in-Ukraine

Excerpt:

As the Ukraine crisis continues to deepen, the mainstream U.S. news media is sinking to new lows of propaganda and incompetence. Somehow, a violent neo-Nazi-spearheaded putsch overthrowing a democratically elected president was refashioned into a “legitimate” regime, then the “interim” government and now simply “Ukraine.”

The Washington Post’s screaming headline on Sunday is “Ukraine decries Russian ‘invasion,’” treating the coup regime in Kiev as if it speaks for the entire country when it clearly speaks for only a subset of the population, mostly from western Ukraine. The regime’s “legitimacy” comes not from a democratic election but from a coup that was quickly embraced by the U.S. government and the European Union.

Objective U.S. journalists would insist on a truthful narrative that conveys these nuances to the American people, not simply behave as clumsy propagandists determined to glue “white hats” on the side favored by the State Department and “black hats” on everyone that the U.S. government disdains. But virtually the entire mainstream press corps has opted for the propaganda role, much as it has in the past. Think Iraq 2002-03.

You also might remember the mainstream media’s rush to judgment over the Sarin attack in Syria on Aug. 21, 2013. The State Department rashly blamed the incident on the Syrian government despite serious doubts inside the U.S. intelligence community.

[See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis.”]

Because the retraction was “buried,” however, much of Official Washington still thinks the earlier story, supposedly proving the Syrian government’s guilt, is operational. That’s why you see politicians, like Sen. John McCain, accusing President Barack Obama of cowardice for failing to bomb Syria after it crossed his “red line” against using chemical weapons.

You’ve had a similar rush to judgment in connection with the violence that broke out in Kiev last month. The U.S. government and news media blamed lethal sniper fire on the government of President Viktor Yanukovych and – after he was driven from office by a neo-Nazi-led putsch on Feb. 22 – the U.S. media made much of how the new rump regime in Kiev had accused Yanukovych of mass murder.

However, according to an intercepted phone conversation between Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, Paet reported on a conversation that he had with a doctor in Kiev who said the sniper fire that killed protesters was the same that killed police officers.

As reported by the UK Guardian, “During the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga – who the Russian media identified her as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor – blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters.”

Paet said, “What was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.

“So she also showed me some photos, she said that as medical doctor, she can say it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened. … So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition.”

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The next step is to white-out the brown shirts of the neo-Nazi storm troopers who led the final violent overthrow of Yanukovych. Then, you clean up the unsavory coup regime by having its U.S.-chosen leader, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, receive a formal welcome at the White House. Next, you pretend that the concerns of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s east and south are simply the result of Moscow’s propaganda and intimidation.

That’s what we’re seeing now. The New York Times even dispatched correspondent C.J. Chivers, the same guy who falsely fingered the Syrian government with that “vector analysis” last September, to co-author a dispatch entitled “Pressure and Intimidation Grip Crimea,” with the subtitle, “Russia Moves Swiftly to Stifle Dissent Ahead of Secession Vote.”

You get the picture? While the New York Times accepted the rump parliament’s actions in Kiev last month as “legitimate” – voting in lock step under the watchful of eye of neo-Nazi militias to depose Yanukovych and strip away rights of ethnic Russians – a different standard will apply to Crimea’s referendum on bailing out of the failed Ukrainian state.

That vote, if it favors secession, must be seen as rigged and resulting only from Russian coercion, all the better to continue the false narrative that now dominates the U.S. political/media process.



Can Obama Speak Strongly for Peace?

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54799/can-obama-speak-strongly-for-peace

Excerpt:

With the neocons again ascendant – and with the U.S. news media again failing to describe a foreign crisis honestly – Barack Obama faces perhaps the greatest challenge of his presidency, a moment when he needs to find the courage to correct a false narrative that his own administration has spun regarding Ukraine – and to explain why it’s crucial to cooperate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the cause of world peace.

In other words, if Obama is to salvage his historical legacy, he must find within himself the strength and eloquence that President John F. Kennedy displayed in possibly his greatest oration, his June 10, 1963 address at American University in Washington, D.C. In that speech, Kennedy outlined the need to collaborate with Soviet leaders to avert dangerous confrontations, like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Kennedy also declared that it was wrong for America to seek world domination, and he asserted that U.S. foreign policy must be guided by a respect for the understandable interests of adversaries as well as allies. Kennedy said:

“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

Kennedy recognized that his appeal for this serious pursuit of peace would be dismissed by the cynics and the warmongers as unrealistic and even dangerous. The Cold War was near its peak when Kennedy spoke. But he was determined to change the frame of the foreign policy debate, away from the endless bravado of militarism:

“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. …

“Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”

And then, in arguably the most important words that he ever spoke, Kennedy said, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”

Kennedy followed up his AU speech with practical efforts to work with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to rein in dangers from nuclear weapons and to discuss other ways of reducing international tensions, initiatives that Khrushchev welcomed although many of the hopeful prospects were cut short by Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963

----

Obama has yet to leave behind any memorable quote, despite his undeniable eloquence. There are his slogans, like “hope and change” and some thoughtful speeches about race and income inequality, but nothing of the substance and the magnitude of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” and Kennedy’s “we all inhabit this small planet.”

But now may be the time for Obama to deliver a speech that grapples with the central foreign policy question facing the United States, essentially whether America will continue seeking to be an Empire or return to being a Republic. Obama also needs to confront the crisis in the political/media worlds where propaganda holds sway and the public is misled.

If Obama doesn’t meet this challenge head on – and explain to the American people why he has sought (mostly behind the scenes) to work with Russian President Putin to reduce tensions over Syria and Iran – he can expect that the final years of his presidency will be overwhelmed by neocon demands that he start up a new Cold War.

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If President Obama doesn’t actually believe that the United States should undertake the willful destabilization of nuclear-armed Russia, he might want to tell the American people before these matters get out of hand. He also should describe more honestly the events now overtaking Ukraine.
But it has been Obama’s custom to allow his administration’s foreign policy to be set by powerful “rivals” who often have profoundly different notions about what needs to be done in the world. Obama then tries to finesse their arguments, more like the moderator of an academic debate than President.

The best documented case of this pattern was how Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus maneuvered Obama into what turned out to be a pointless “surge” in Afghanistan in 2009. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Robert Gates Double-Crosses Obama.”]

Kerry’s Double-Dealing

But Obama has been undercut, too, by his current Secretary of State John Kerry, who has behaved more like President John McCain’s top diplomat than President Obama’s. To the surprise of many Democratic friends, Kerry has chosen to take highly belligerent – and factually dubious – positions on Iran, Syria and now Ukraine.
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As Obama quietly tried to build on his collaboration with Putin, Kerry’s State Department undercut the relationship once more when neocon holdover Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland stoked the crisis in Ukraine on Russia’s border.

Last December, Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, told a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion to promote the country’s “European aspirations.” She also personally encouraged anti-government protesters in Kiev by passing out cookies and discussed in an intercepted phone call who should serve in the new regime once President Yanukovych was gone.

Last month, when snipers opened fire and the violence killed both protesters and police, Kerry’s State Department was quick to point the finger of blame at the democratically elected President Yanukovych, although more recent evidence, including an intercepted call involving the Estonian foreign minister, suggests that elements of the opposition shot both protesters and police as a provocation.

Nevertheless, the State Department’s rush to judgment blaming Yanukovych and the gullible acceptance of this narrative by the mainstream U.S. news media created a storyline of “white-hat” protesters vs. a “black-hat” government, ignoring the many “brown shirts” of neo-Nazi militias who had moved to the front of the Kiev uprising.



How the West Enabled the Rise of Russian Nationalism (The Nation)

http://www.thenation.com/article/178826/how-west-enabled-rise-russian-nationalism

Excerpt:

With the ascent of Arseny Yatsenyuk’s pro-Western coalition in Kiev, Moscow has had reason to believe that Kiev would resume its drive to join NATO and denounce the Black Sea agreement that allows Russia to keep its fleet in Crimea until 2042. By intervening in Crimea, Putin acknowledged that his leverage against Kiev—largely based on natural gas supplies and personal ties with Ukrainian pragmatists—was insufficient to ensure Ukraine’s neutral status and preserve Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

In addition to security hawks, the Ukrainian revolution empowered Russian ethno-imperialists who have been insulted by the new Ukraine’s version of history that devalues the Soviet contribution to Nazi defeat and glorifies Stepan Bandera. Bandera fought alongside the Nazi against the Soviets and actively participated in Holocaust. Former Ukrainian leader Yushchenko awarded Bandera the medal of Hero of Ukraine that Yanukovych subsequently cancelled. That the Western nations never condemned such a nationalist version of history and embraced those who advanced it exacerbated Russians’ sense of betrayal by Kiev

Steps that followed confirmed Russian fears. Kiev canceled the law on Russian language (it has now repealed that action), restricted Russian media coverage, pushed many eastern and southern representatives out of the Rada, proposed “lustrations” against members of the “old regime,” and formed a new government with a heavy representation of nationalist figures. Indeed, prominent positions in the new cabinet are now held by members of ultranationalist organizations who trace their political roots to Bandera. Among them are minister of defense, head of national security, prosecutor general and minister of education—presumably to educate Ukrainians in the spirit of Russophobic history. Back in the government is also the proponent of NATO under Yushchenko, Boris Tarasyuk. The new Rada is now considering a law on gaining membership in the alliance. In response to many Crimeans obtaining Russian passports, there is also a proposal to punish the second (Russian) citizenship with ten years jail time.

During the Ukrainian revolution, Putin could not ignore those who turned to Russia for protection. In the war in Georgia he defended not only Russia’s security perimeters, but also Russian citizens and small nationalities in the Caucasus. Putin further embraced some ethno-nationalist ideas in response to nationalist and middle class protests in 2011–12. For instance, in one of his pre-election articles he described ethnic Russians as “the core [sterzhen’] that binds the fabric” of Russia as a culture and a state. Inaction to the Ukranian revolution would have come with the high cost of declining support for Putin”s claims to leadership in Eurasia.

Although the exact extent of nationalist influences on Putin remains unknown, it is clear that the Crimea intervention has made his internal position stronger. Until security guarantees are provided to Russia, and the issue of Ukraine’s non-NATO status and protection of ethnic Russians is seriously addressed, it is increasingly likely that Crimea will remain the Kremlin’s leverage and will not be returned to Ukraine.

NY Times Manufactures More Half Truths On Ukraine:

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/20/the_new_york_times_manufactures_ignorance_more_half_truths_about_ukraine/

Excerpt:

I have explored previously in this space the journalistic phenomenon I term “the power of leaving out.” We have a classic case before us.

I cannot find anywhere an account that rests on the self-evident proposition that as action begets reaction, reaction by definition requires antecedent action. Putin’s speech at the Kremlin Palace Tuesday revealed his boiling reaction to events in Ukraine since Yanukovych was deposed. He stood before all as a man provoked, and in case anyone missed this he did the favor of saying so in spades.

“If you press a spring too hard it will recoil,” Putin said. Entirely apt, pretty good one-sentence summary, including an acknowledgment that he has sprung swiftly at Ukraine, and in angry reaction.

Nothing, no hint of responsibility explained in the news reports and analysis, no causality. There are the merest flicks at the role of unnamed “foreigners,” but only such as to make Putin appear paranoid. Here is my favorite, from the Times coverage of the Putin speech:

“He said that the United States and Europe had crossed ‘a red line’ on Ukraine by throwing support to the new government that quickly emerged after Mr. Yanukovych fled the capital.”

Can you spot the phony chronology? Putin’s gripe predated Yanukovych’s flight by a long way, arising out of the covert meddling of Americans among the friendliest pols in Kiev (and, if history is any guide, probably among the demonstrators in Independence Square, too).

The Ukraine crisis was the final touch, the political piece, in a two-decade campaign to entice westward the country’s vigorously anti-Russian elements. More broadly, we have the advance of NATO up to Russia’s borders, a strategy so provocative and ahistorical that even Tom Friedman thinks it was dumb (or he did for at least one afternoon at the computer not long ago).

This kind of willful omission can do lasting damage to public understanding. It is an eternal point of contention among scholars, but many are the historians who recognize that the Soviet Union, as it long insisted, was indeed surrounded during the Cold War, and its posture was in important measure defensive. Few Americans even now grasp this as at least an arguable dimension of the period’s history.

This week we witness the manufacture of the same ignorance again. This is the open and shut of it.

I blame the media only in part. Their sin lies in not calling the political leadership on its failure to accept responsibility in Ukraine crisis — and its consequent determination to repeat the same mistakes.

The Pentagon has sent new F-16s to Poland and new F-15s to the Baltics. It is now flying surveillance jets over the Polish and Romanian borders with Ukraine. It is planning new naval exercises in the Black Sea, the rough equivalent of Russian naval exercises in the Caribbean.
Nothing provocative here. No, the lesson drawn is that the East–West chasm now opening requires more of this, not less. Ian Bond, who directs foreign policy studies at the Center for European Affairs, a London think tank, thinks American military exercises scheduled to take place in Ukraine this July (unconscionable in itself) should be moved up in response to the crisis.

Neoliberalism, Truth and Social Justice (Interview with Henry Giroux):

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/neoliberalism_youth_and_social_justice_20140314

Does Hillary's Dumb Hitler Comment Disqualify Her As A Dem Presidential Candidate?

Hitler and Vladimir Putin: There's no analogy other than in the minds of the historically -challenged or hysterically rabid neocons. Is Hillary part of the first set or the latter?

Hillary Clinton in the midst of all the Neocon-Neoliberal bombast in the U.S. on the Ukraine crisis, might be forgiven for making dumb ass remarks comparing Putin to Hitler in a private fund raiser. However, as a likely Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party this is not something that can be blithely swept under the rug or ignored.

For those who may not know,  she was caught out making egregious comparisons of Adolf Hitler's 'tactics' in the 1930s to Vladimir Putin's justifiable responses to Neocon -instigated thuggery in the Ukraine. She went on to say:

"Now if this sounds familiar this is what the early  Hitler did in the 30s.' I have to go and protect my people'."

Actually, anyone who's studied German history or actually visited the country and spoken to Germans that lived in that era knows this is all BS. Hitler in his early years, especially in his Munich meetings- speeches,  was focused on the unfair treatment meted out to Germany under the Treaty of Versailles, following World War I.  Konrad Heiden, a journalist of the era, in his book, The Fuehrer, pp. 80-81, explains:

"The idea of self-determination originated in old Austria, where Germans, Hungarians, Italians and Slavs, of different language and nationality, lived under one crown and fought one another bitterly. After the war it became a world slogan. Woodrow Wilson had taken it up, it served as a yardstick for the Peace Of Versailles.  To all European nations the same right to self-determination had been granted - except to defeated Germany. Regions inhabited by Germans had been given to other countries by plebiscite, consequently without self-determination - German South Tyrol to Italy, the so-called Sudeten Germans to Czechoslovakia  .....and even German-speaking parts of Austria...had been coldly rebuffed.

From the democratic right of self-determination, Hitler forged one of his sharpest and most effective weapons in a struggle for power, whose ultimate aims went for beyond any self-determination. "

Thus did Hitler demand  rights of self-determination for the broad "German nation". That is, all those nations stripped of self-determination by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler also magnified this theme by appeal to the Volkisch movement that had persisted in Germany since the Middle Ages. It extolled a kind of phony Aryanism and invested much of it in myths traced back to ancient Nordic origins. It also incorporated Christian rituals, such as the Passion Play at Oberammagau, in which the Jews were featured as "Christ killers". In other words, the Volkisch movement embodied a cultural anti-Semitism that had gone on for centuries, Hitler merely exploited it, partly out of pure laziness (he didn't have to create whole new themes and legends) and partly because German anti-Semitism had existed for centuries as a societal undercurrent.

But none of this is remotely comparable to Putin's response to the U.S. coup in Ukraine, which as I already noted, even Col. Lawrence Wilkerson asserted he was justified in doing - three nights ago on Chris Hayes 'All In'.  In other words, Putin was indeed protecting Russian interests in Ukraine from U.S. Neocon-sponsored ultra-nationalists. Hitler, meanwhile, was out to reclaim all former nations originally part of the "German nation" - by which he meant the German-speaking nation and those deprived of self-determination under the Treaty of Versailles.

This is what makes Hillary's next comment  - after her remarks were made public- so egregious:

"I was just trying to provide historical context that we can learn from  this tactic that has been seen  before. "

What 'historical context'? There is no such genuine context! There is no such 'tactic'! Putin was spurred to action by exercising his right to protect Russian ethnics-speakers  in the Ukraine, after they'd been denied to even exercise their own language and were being beaten by Svoboda party ultra-nationalists sponsored by U.S. Neocons embedded in the NED (National Endowment for Democracy). The legitimate government had been overthrown by these same Neocons - pushing eastward to try to put NATO right at Russia's doorstep. This is absolute insanity! 

By contrast, Hitler's occupations were based on the themes noted earlier, as well as the concept of "Lebensraum" or living space. I.e. the need to increase Germany's resource base if it was to return to any kind of practical self-determination.

The irony of Versailles, is that it left in its wake the palsied, pre-Reich Weimar Republic constituting a weak democracy which had little or no control over the most radical Rightists, especially Hitler’s (actually, originally Ernst Röhm's) NSDAP party. The latter is more comparable to the Svoboda Party in the Ukraine, which is a fascist party supported by U.S. Neocons with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians. Why wouldn't Putin be rightly concerned with Nazis literally at his doorstep, supported by whackos of the far right in the U.S.? Again, if the situation were reversed the U.S. would do the same. And as for all the Neoliberal media applause when all the "pro- democracy" protests erupted in Kiev, let's not forget how the U.S. police state banged the heads of Occupy protestors when they launched massive protests in New York, LA etc. Oh, and also put them in rifle sights in Houston, e.g.

See. http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1494


Lastly, one of the most powerful forces leveraging Hitler into total power was German Big Business.  As noted by Ian Kershaw  (‘Hitler Nemesis’, p. xxxiii):

“Leaders of big business, though often harboring private concerns about current difficulties and looming future problems for the economy, for their part were grateful to Hitler for the destruction of the left-wing parties and trade unions. They were again ‘masters in the house’ in their dealings with their work force”


Note carefully: It wasn't Hitler destroying right wing parties but LEFT WING PARTIES and TRADE UNIONS! THIS is why the German capitalists, such as Krupp, Volkswagen, I.G. Farben (infamous for later manufacturing the Zyklon B gas used in the gas chambers) etc. threw their lot behind him and provided the political ballast, without which he could never have become 'Der Fuehrer'.  All this is validated in Heiden's book as well.

In effect, the correct analogy to what is happening in the Ukraine now, is U.S.  Neoliberal Business fueling the drive to push NATO to Russia's doorstep, via weapons sales, as pointed out by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on Chris Hayes' show three nights ago.   This drive, and the mandate to get Ukraine under the U.S. Neoliberal banner is what prompted the Neocon coup instigated by Victoria Nuland, John McCain and others.  

The odd thing about all this is I thought Hillary had a better grasp of history than she's shown. Indeed, in 2008 I was a strong Clinton supporter, believing she was the right person to lead the nation and I didn't trust Obama's lofty rhetoric and high promises. In the wake of the Bush debacle I felt: 1) people would actually believe them and push him into office based on Bush hatred, and 2) Obama once in - and out of campaign mode- would never live up to the hype.  Both turned out to be true.

My worry with Hillary now - after her remarks- is that she is a Neocon, or at least Neocon-lite. Why else keep Victoria Nuland around, a dedicated Neocon and NED'er,  following the lead of her hubby, Robert Kagan?  It also bothers me that Hillary was one of the Dems that voted for the Iraq invasion in 2003 -  though I did believe in 2008 she could be a changeling.

Right now, I am on the fence, but will be watching closely. Meanwhile, my hope is  that the Ukraine crisis will be resolved without bloodshed or war, but that depends on the U.S. and how strident a response it musters. Right now, the main talk (by the Neolib media) is using the 'gas weapon". That is, since the U.S. is now the de facto biggest producer of natural gas (via fracking) in the world, we can supply the Ukraine instead of it having to depend on Russia.

If this plan goes through it may avoid ultimate catastrophe (WWIII) but at the expense of millions more fracking wells, many likely right in your neighborhood.....coming soon!

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/06/propaganda_and_nonsense_even_more_new_york_times_hypocrisy/

And:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/norman-solomon/54642/hillary-clinton-on-putin-playing-a-dog-eared-hitler-card


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54626/did-right-wing-protesters-hire-snipers-to-kill-protesters-and-police-at-maidan

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54630/putin-or-kerry-whos-delusional

Russia "Violating International Law"? How About the U.S.?

The nonsense now issuing from the Neoliberal fascist press is dumb founding as well as enraging. Oh, "there're no Nazi thugs destroying buildings or beating people"! Putin just made it all up as an excuse to invade Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula. Another blow dried bimbo on Kornacki this morning insisted: "Well, ya know, Russia is gonna do what it wants to do to advance its interests in the end!"

Yeah, so? The implication being that the goody two shoes, scrupulously lawful (when it suits its fancy)  U.S. wouldn't? WTF are you saying? Again, more protectionist smokescreen  blather to cover the tracks of the Neoliberal coup taking place in Ukraine, even proclaiming now an unelected gov't the "legitimate one".  But what is exponentially galling to me (and many others)  - who don't get our news from the putrid prostitute American Neolib corporate media- is the notion that the U.S. wouldn't be doing the very same thing as Russia if the tables and situation were turned.  But many Americans who are gobbling this propaganda of Russia "breaking international law" - as Obama spouted last night, don't even know where the hell Ukraine is! The map below should give them a clue:

 Note Ukraine abuts Russia on its southwest border. Note it carefully!  Now, try to conceive a juxtaposition of events and conditions whereby Florida (on the U.S. SE coast) has somehow become a separate protectorate  - say like Puerto Rico - and is suddenly taken over by hundreds of thousands of Cuban Castro sympathizers.  They localize attention at Miami where they essentially take over and raise Cuban flags. All this on a state right next to Georgia.

 

Would the then "symmetrical situation"  U.S. just sit back and let events unfold, especially if the commie Cubans were going around beating up upstanding citizens, defacing buildings, burning up synagogues or churches  etc.? In your dreams!  There'd be such a display of 'shock and awe' invasion it would make your head swim! So no one can prattle away nonsense and tell me the U.S. wouldn't do the very same thing Russia is now doing, if the situation were somehow reversed.

 

Thus, the crap former Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor was trying to push on MSNBC this morning (supposedly the most "liberal" of the networks allotted to us) is absurd. Taylor, totally deficient in recent U.S. history and flouting of international law, actually declared:

 

"We ought to treat Russia as an outlaw state, and that means treating Putin and Russia like other outlaw states"

Oh, oh, you mean like the U.S.?

 

Has this mentally-challenged imp forgotten how the U.S. became an outlaw state in 2003, invading under bogus pretense the sovereign state of Iraq?   In the case of Bush's justifying the Iraq invasion and butchery (WHO estimates up to 600,000 Iraqis killed)  we beheld a perfect example of what moral philosopher  John Kekes called "rationalizing evil" ( 'The Roots Of Evil , p. 168).

 

Using every sort of ruse - from 'yellowcake' to aluminum tubes and alleged claims of WMD (from a rat named 'curve ball') - the Bushies pumped up a bogus case for invasion, just like Hitler and the Nazis did (using faked imagery of German fraus being raped by Poles) to justify an invasion of Poland in 1939. Once he had the U.S. corporate media on his side it was merely a matter of drum beating a sheep-like American public into giving him the poll numbers he desired to launch an invasion in March, 2003.

 

One idiot commenter  (it's incredible how many lurk all over the damned place) on a UK Guardian forum, in response to another who had pointed this out, scribbled:

 

"Oh wait! So you're going to use what Bush did back then to justify what Putin is doing now?"

 

Bush actually didn't "do it" on his own. He and his craven neocon slime confected an "Iraqi War Resolution" which MOST congress critters of BOTH parties then signed on to. So even if Bush and his cohort designed the plan, congress as the last bulwark to preventing an outlaw act could have stopped it. They didn't. Hence, it's on the U.S.  Putin is behaving in no different way now than the U.S. did then, in fact he has more justification on his side, given Ukraine's on his doorstep not 6,000 miles away!

 

Anyway, Bush’s aggression also exposed unsavory aspects about ourselves as a nation:  a willingness to violate Nuremberg Article IV to actually launch a pre-emptive, aggressive war just as the Nazis did when they invaded Poland. The rich humor of it all is that at the time the Bushies actually compared Saddam to Hitler!  Some 'Muricans actually swallowed this shit up and took it as gospel!

But WHERE are the objective voices and people to point this out now? Well, they are no place to be seen! It's perfectly okie dokie if WE invade another nation, just because a dictator made idle "threats" against a former president's daddy, but woe betide any nation that remotely tries to protect its own interests - which are geographically even more proximate.

 

Thus, the irony inherent in Obama telling Putin he's "violating international law" might at least be easier to swallow if the towering blatant hypocrisy weren't already imbued in U.S. policy-   including targeted drone strikes in more than half a dozen Middle East nations - whose sovereignty is being regularly trashed.

Why has this country veered so far off course? Most of it can be traced to the document known as NSC-68 prepared by Paul Nitze of the National Security Council – completed by 1950. The document essentially contained the blueprint for unending strife and undeclared wars, all of which would be invoked on the basis of a zero tolerance threshold for foreigners’ misbehavior. The putative basis? To enable U.S. agitation, overthrow (or assassination) of democratically-elected leaders, e.g. Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954,

 

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

 

 and large and small occupations (ranging from the few thousand troops in the Dominican Republic in 1965, to more than 200,000 in Iraq by 2006.) 

The motivating force of the document was clear in this regard:

“a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere”
 

In other words, any place for which the U.S. even remotely construes a “defeat of free institutions” gives it license to intervene at will. This critical aspect is described thusly by Morris Berman[1]:

“Nitze emphasized the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.

In other words, it provided the formula for unending war, and the building of Empire. Gore Vidal pinpoints the emergence of the American Empire when he notes[2]:

“Since 1950 the United States has fought perhaps a hundred overt and covert wars. None was declared by the nominal representatives of the American people in Congress…they had meekly turned over to the executive their principal great power to wage war. That was the end of that Constitution”.

The key point to note here is not only did the U.S. invoke a specious doctrine[3] to entitle it to engage in warfare wherever it deemed the “need” (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.) but also to take out democratically elected leaders where and when they threatened U.S. corporate interests, such as Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran (1953)- threatened U.S. Oil interests, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954)- threatened United Fruit Corp. by giving land to farmers, and Salvador Allende in Chile (1972)- strategic interests threatened.

Even when specious doctrines weren't invoked, lies and deceptions often were in order to involve the U.S. in massive troop deployments and years of ruinous (to lives and treasure) military intrusions. For example, LBJ employed the ruse of the North Vietnamese firing on the Maddox and Turner Joy in international waters in August, 1964 as the basis to ramp up the Vietnam War. Similarly, Bush and Cheney employed the ruse that Saddam had "WMD" to justify Operation "Iraqi Freedom" (a bogus name if ever there was one) and invade Iraq - which had not one damned thing to do with 9/11. (Though the numskulls who watched FAUX News would argue with that!)

What is most disconcerting in the present crisis' context, is that we can't even get an opposing POV from the Democrats. The  lips  of these lily-livered, co-opted Neoliberal wimps are uniformly sealed. Oh, except when they blurt out  or tweet bollocks, as a moron Dem from CT did yesterday, i.e. along the lines of: #Ukraine: "Putin playing with fire in Crimea!"

Putin "playing with fire"?? How about the U.S. and its resident neocons  playing with fire. Deliberately destabilizing the gov't in Kiev for months in advance, with visits by  Crazy Johnno McCain,  Neocons at the NED,  as well as manipulations by Neocon Victoria Nuland at State, i.e.  to topple the originally elected government of  Viktor Yanukovych and insert her pal "Yats" - a reich-wing, ultra-nationalist stooge.   The objective being to make it a NATO Neolib outpost right on Russian's SW border!  (Imagine if the Warsaw Pact still existed, doing a similar think to Florida!) As pointed out by smirkingchimp blogger Mike Whitney:

"In order to topple Yanukovych, the US had to tacitly support fanatical groups of neo-Nazi thugs and anti-Semites"

But, after their almost unified stance against Edward Snowden's whistleblowing on the NSA perfidy,  I've pretty well given up on the Demos anyway. They're only useful for invoking as a last minute counter measure if the Rs have someone or something  a million times worse. As one blogger on Smirkingchimp.com once put it: "They're no different from the repukes except they lube you up first."

Meanwhile, embedded Neocons such as Paul Roderick Gregory at FORBES, are trying to goad Obama into precipitous action by calling him a "paper tiger" e.g.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/03/01/alarm-putin-will-not-stop-with-crimea-paper-tiger-obama-will-do-nothing/


 This is not productive or conducive to our own national security, but it's the standard modus operandi of neocons with Neoliberal market aspirations of controlling other nations' destinies.

Let us hope cooler heads continue to prevail, and that Obama can summon at least part of the courage JFK had to during the October, 1962 missile crisis- when he faced down Gen. Curtis Lemay and other war hawks who demanded he bomb and invade Cuba. Kennedy told them to stick it up their wazoos, thereby avoiding a nuclear war.

Yes, according to the Neolib mouthpieces and their neocon nonsense blabbing this morning: "Russia is greatly reduced from what it was with the former  Soviet Union".

Maybe. But they still have more than 3,000 ICBMs bearing multi-megaton hydrogen war heads. NO matter how much the crazies in this  country want to go 'nuke 'em' or as one nut proposed ,"blow up a Russian train station so no troops can move in"  - believe me, it would be a bad idea!

Stay tuned!  See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/norman-solomon/54563/heard-the-one-about-obama-denouncing-a-breach-of-international-law

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/54548/the-road-to-war
--------------

[1] Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.

[2] Gore Vidal: 2002, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Thunders Mouth, p. 124.
[3] Of course, the ignominious “Bush Doctrine” – crafted under the auspices of the 2002 National Security Strategy – was even more noisome and outrageous, allowing for pre-emptive war as it made Iraq the gold standard for precedence. See: Berman, op. cit., p. 203.

NO! The U.S. Does NOT Want a War With Russia!

A Russian Destroyer, the Moskva, leaves its base for the waters off Syria in July. Below: Obama clueless as to who the real "freedom fighters" are in Ukraine.

Q. What do you get when you cross a neocon with a Neoliberal?

A. The Shock Doctrine, 100, 000 dead ....then Wall Street stock or bond shares on the new oil or debt.

It was laughable last night seeing Bill Maher expose the Neocon asshole William Kristol for the braggart know-nothing he is, just like the rest of his ilk. In turn, Bill trotted out three of Kristol's predictions made before the invasion of Iraq including: 1) The U.S. will be vindicated when the weapons of mass destruction are discovered, 2) Very few wars in American history were better prepared for, and 3) It's 'pop psychology' to believe the Shi'ia can't get along with the Sunni.

All of which, along with the other trope - i.e. that the oil we find will pay for the war, were shown to be total nonsense and lies.

So WHY in the hell should anyone with half a grain of sense or half a brain believe these idiots when they yap for confronting the Russians over Ukraine? And yet last night, what did we behold? Obama getting up on his lectern and "warning" the Russians about "interfering in Ukraine". Are you kidding me? The U.S. interfered long before the Russians via their Neocon NED as I described in the previous blog. Is ANYONE paying attention? Is the President?

And what is he going to do when the Russians laugh at these hollow warnings? Make no mistake that going up against the Russians will not be anything like the mock "wars" of the past 14 years, based mainly on invading and occupying two nations laden with impoverished, ragtag, robed radicals who can barely muster enough supplies to make home made bombs.  The Russians, by contrast, have actual fighter jets, battle ships and tanks, as well as a well equipped army that will give the U.S. everything it can handle and more. It won't be any 'shock and awe' cakewalk like in Iraq. So why is Obama falling for this bullshit, and why hasn't he cleaned house and gotten rid of the Neocons?

And why hasn't Obama sacked the Neocon advisors putting him up to this rubbish? Why does he have ANY Neocons still in his administration? As blogger Robert Parry put it two days ago:

"the U.S. government appears nearly as divided as the Ukrainian people. While neocon holdovers in the State Department, particularly Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, helped instigate the crisis, President Obama has seen his collaboration with Putin to tamp down crises in Syria and Iran put at risk"

This  sounds to me like Obama needs to do a major clean up at State. Get rid of these buggers once and for all! Send them packing! No Neocons!  Obama needs to grasp he is backing the WRONG side! And also, these "freedom fighting citizens" are mainly Neo-Nazi thugs!  See also:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/27/the-neo-nazis-of-ukraine/

Excerpt:

"The Washington-paid schemers are now reaping their just reward as they sit in craven silence while neo-nazi Muzychko wielding an Ak-47 challenges government officials to their face: “I dare you take my gun!” Only Obama, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, Washington’s European puppets, and the Western prostitute media can describe the brutal reality of post-coup Ukraine as “the forward march of democracy.

If a democratically elected president and ruling party are so easily driven from power by armed neo-nazis, what chance do Washington’s paid stooges among the so-called “moderates” have of forming a government?"

Indeed, it is yet another display of supporting Neoliberal FASCISM! Neo -Nazis! Are you shitting me? WTF are we doing supporting Nazis? Has this country gone mad, or is the leadership now bamboozled again by the Neocons who clearly have them by the balls too?

 As I cited Mike Whitney's piece at the end of the post yesterday:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/54509/the-coup-in-ukraine-obamas-dumbest-plan-yet

In order to topple Yanukovych, the US had to tacitly support fanatical groups of neo-Nazi thugs and anti-Semites. And, even though “Interim Ukrainian President Oleksander Tuchynov has pledged to do everything in his power to protect the country’s Jewish community”; reports on the ground are not so encouraging. Here’s an excerpt from a statement by Natalia Vitrenko, of The Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine that suggests the situation is much worse than what is being reported in the news:

“Across the country… People are being beaten and stoned, while undesirable members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are subject to mass intimidation and local officials see their families and children targeted by death threats if they do not support the installation of this new political power. The new Ukrainian authorities are massively burning the offices of political parties they do not like, and have publicly announced the threat of criminal prosecution and prohibition of political parties and public organizations that do not share the ideology and goals of the new regime.” (“USA and EU Are Erecting a Nazi Regime on Ukrainian Territory”, Natalia Vitrenko)

Ukraine is gradually succumbing to the loving embrace of the New World Order where it will serve as another profit-generating cog in Wall Street’s wheel. That’s the theory, at least. It hasn’t occurred to the boneheads at the New York Times or Washington Post that Ukraine is rapidly descending into Mad Max-type anarchy which could spill over its borders into neighboring countries triggering violent conflagrations, social upheaval, regional instability or–god-help-us– WW3"

It is high time to call a halt to this insanity now!

Mr. Obama, tell the Neocons burrowed within your administration to get the hell out! Tell any Neocon advisors to shut the fuck up! We do not need or want World War III - which believe me, these assholes are leading us into one fell step after another. Do not let them make you believe Russia does not have as much right to defend her doorstep as we do ours!  (And WHO can forget how Reagan dispatched several Marine regiments  and ships to the small island of Grenada in 1983 to wipe out a small (400-650) band of Cuban commie engineers - on the island to repair roads. Don't hand me any shit that WE also don't fight to protect what's near our doorstep - even if 2,000 miles away!)

Enough of this crap!

Be like JFK and act as a leader for once, and tell the warmongers and warmakers to take a long hike on a short pier.

And please, no more empty, provocative threats - unless you're also prepared to threaten the Nazis wreaking mayhem in Ukraine!  See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/daniel-patrick-welch/54546/worst-man-for-the-job-what-the-hell-is-obama-thinking

See the nationalist filth that the West, the neocons and Obama are backing here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY